The Daily Beast: America's NASCAR Capitals

America's NASCAR Capitals

Daytona will be packed this weekend for the Super Bowl of stock car racing, but which American city boasts NASCAR's most dedicated fans? The Daily Beast crunches the numbers.

To rank the passion-for-cars capitals, The Daily Beast considered which has the largest population of self-professed fans and the greatest number of residents who attend NASCAR races, wear their passion on their sleeve (literally) or stay apprised of NASCAR news online. For this data, they used the following statistics for nearly 100 metro areas:

• Total fans by vicinity, according to Scarborough Sports Marketing, a sports marketing firm. Fans, as a percentage of the total population, were measured by a nationwide survey in 2010 of adults who defined themselves as "very, somewhat, or a little bit interested" in NASCAR. This category was weighted double in the final tabulation.

• Event attention, as measured by the percentage of the population that watched NASCAR events on television in the last year, according to Experian Simmons, a leading market research firm.

• Online interest, represented by the relative searches for NASCAR in the last 12 months, according to Google Insights for Search, a tool which enables search volume comparisons. As well, they considered the percentage of the population that went to Nascar.com in the last 30 days according to Experian Simmons.

• Merchandise sales, according to the percentage of the population who bought NASCAR licensed apparel in the last year, according to Experian Simmons.

More from this Slideshow

Daytona will be packed this weekend for the Super Bowl of stock car racing, but which American city boasts NASCAR's most dedicated fans? The Daily Beast crunches the numbers.

To rank the passion-for-cars capitals, The Daily Beast considered which has the largest population of self-professed fans and the greatest number of residents who attend NASCAR races, wear their passion on their sleeve (literally) or stay apprised of NASCAR news online. For this data, they used the following statistics for nearly 100 metro areas:

• Total fans by vicinity, according to Scarborough Sports Marketing, a sports marketing firm. Fans, as a percentage of the total population, were measured by a nationwide survey in 2010 of adults who defined themselves as "very, somewhat, or a little bit interested" in NASCAR. This category was weighted double in the final tabulation.

• Event attention, as measured by the percentage of the population that watched NASCAR events on television in the last year, according to Experian Simmons, a leading market research firm.

• Online interest, represented by the relative searches for NASCAR in the last 12 months, according to Google Insights for Search, a tool which enables search volume comparisons. As well, they considered the percentage of the population that went to Nascar.com in the last 30 days according to Experian Simmons.

• Merchandise sales, according to the percentage of the population who bought NASCAR licensed apparel in the last year, according to Experian Simmons.